Smithfield Foods To Close Norfolk Plant

Workers To Move To Smithfield

May 03, 2002|By PATRICK LYNCH Daily Press

SMITHFIELD — About 160 Smithfield Packing Co. workers in Norfolk will be laid off, but most of them will be offered jobs in Smithfield.

Parent company Smithfield Foods Inc. on Thursday announced that it will close its Smithfield Packing operation in Norfolk, where workers produce smoked hams and fatback. The work done in Norfolk will be shifted to the plant in Smithfield to improve efficiency, the company said.

The Norfolk employees, except for those on probation, will be offered jobs at the Smithfield plant, said Smithfield Foods spokesman Jerry Hostetter. Company officials want to begin moving production to Smithfield from Norfolk by late summer, he said. The Norfolk plant was built in 1980 and is far smaller than the Smithfield Foods operations in Portsmouth, where about 800 people are employed, and Smithfield, where close to 4,500 employees already work. The Smithfield Packing plant in Smithfield employs about 2,500, and it added about 300 workers last year. The company's Gwaltney plant in Smithfield employs more than 2,000. The new jobs could mean a slight boost for Smithfield businesses, said Connie Rhodes, director of the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce.

"People will pick up groceries and run errands," she said. "It would be a boost in that way. As far as all those people moving here, I sort of doubt that will happen. It's too easy for us to commute these days."

SOME HIGHLIGHTS

COST:

* $180 billion over 10 years, a 70 percent increase over the cost of continuing existing programs.

LOCAL IMPACT

* Smithfield Foods Inc. won a bitterly fought battle against a provision that would have prevented meatpackers from raising their own livestock. But local peanut farmers fared poorly under the draft agreement between the Senate and House. The agreement would replace quotas with less-generous price supports.